The Dynamism of Joy in the Christian Life

His Eminence Laurent Cardinal Monsengwo Pasinya

Archbishop of Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo)

The Gospel is the Good News: the Good News of the salvation in Jesus Christ. Good news is announced with joy.

The Good News comes forth from Jesus’s Great Commission: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:19). Therefore, it must be a Church in a state of missionary outreach. Everyone must leave their comfort zone and sense of ease and go out to the peripheries in need of the light of Christ.

The peripheries include the poor, those marginalized by society, those without work and, thus, without dignity and without rights, but also all those who believe they possess every right while actually holding none, insofar as they deprive others of justice the rights due to them.

The missionary outreach implies an intimacy with Christ. An itinerant intimacy, a missionary communion. “In fidelity to the example of the Master, it is vitally important for the Church today to go forth and preach the Gospel to all: to all places, on all occasions, without hesitation, reluctance or fear. The joy of the Gospel is for all people (cf. Lk 2:10)” (Eg 23). 

The Church which goes forth to announce the Gospel to all people, in all places, in all times, without hesitation, without revulsion and without fear supposes that we take initiatives, that we get involved, that “we dive in”, that “we get dirty”, that we accompany, that we live with the people, that we bear fruit, that we shorten distances so as to be in the midst of the people, that we endure rejection and humiliation, that we kneel to wash feet, that we take on human life, touching the suffering flesh of Christ in the people. The evangelizing community lives according to the rhythm of the people, “it has the smell of the sheep” (cf. Eg 24).

The Church, attentive to the concrete situations of all of her children, imitates the actions of Mary at Cana, the very one who did not hesitate to take the initiative and become directly involved. In the same way, it is she, who by becoming intimately involved in the passion and the death of the Redeemer, becomes the “Star of the New Evangelization”.